Meetings like these, even in earliest childhood, with bright souls, persons of culture, intellect, polished manners, and brilliant gifts, all leave strong impressions on a plastic youthful mind, and the memory is undoubtedly an influence through life. But the commanding figure in Harley Street in my early years was not to be found among the doctors: it was Mr. Gladstone, while Mrs. Gladstone’s individuality was hardly second to that of her husband. When Mr. Gladstone first came to live there the mob broke his windows, and shouted and yelled outside his house because of his hostility to Disraeli’s policy in the Russo-Turkish War (1876-8). The Jingo fever was at its height. There was tremendous excitement, and ultimately the street had to be cleared by mounted police. To the surprise of everyone, in the full tide of the tumult, the Gladstones’ front door opened, and out walked the old couple, arm-in-arm, and passed right into the midst of the very people who had been hurling stones through their windows. With the grand manner of an old courtier the statesman took off his hat, made a profound bow to the populace, and before the mob had recovered from its astonishment, he had walked away down the street with his wife. It was a plucky act, and one which so surprised the boisterous assembly that they utterly subsided, and soon dispersed quietly. Mr. Gladstone’s habit every morning was to leave home about half-past nine or ten o’clock and walk down to his work. My sister Olga (wife of Dr. Francis Goodbody), then a very little girl, used to go out with her nurse about the same time to Regent’s Park for her airing in a “pram.” Some twenty or thirty houses divided my father’s from Mr. Gladstone’s, and therefore, as the elderly statesman and the little girl both left home about the same time, they often met. “Well, how is dolly this morning?” he would say, and then he would chaff the child on not having washed dolly’s face, or tell her that the prized treasure wanted a new bonnet. In fact, he never passed her without stopping to pat her on the head, and make some little joke such as children love. She became very fond of her acquaintance and came home quite disappointed if she had not seen “my friend Mr. Gladstone,” as she always called him.